Investigator of Officers Faces the Glare of Scrutiny : LAPD: Lt. William Hall defends his work as a detective and reviewer of police shootings in two high-profile cases.

Lt. William Hall holds one of the most powerful, and sensitive, jobs in the Los Angeles Police Department: investigating officers who have killed or wounded citizens. As head of the LAPD’s officer-involved shooting team, Hall is called upon to expose his fellow cops to the harsh, often unforgiving, glare of public scrutiny.

Now, however, it is Hall who stands in the beam of an unflattering spotlight.

As a young detective in the 1970s, Hall helped conduct the investigation that sent Clarence Chance and Benny Powell to prison for murder--a charge that was thrown out two weeks ago by a judge who chastised the Police Department for its “reprehensible” and “sordid” conduct in the case.

Then, less than a week after Chance and Powell walked free, Hall’s on-the-job conduct came into question in another courtroom. There, a federal jury complained that Hall’s unit had done a shoddy job of investigating the shooting of four robbers by the department’s controversial Special Investigations Section.

These back-to-back, high-profile cases have some city officials questioning Hall’s effectiveness. One city councilman says there is “a cloud” hanging over the veteran lieutenant. And two police commissioners say that--no matter what the truth is--the allegations have created a troublesome public perception for a department trying to work its way out of the shadow of the Rodney G. King beating.

“It certainly creates a cloud over a position that has to be viewed as one of the more sensitive ones in the department,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who recently called for a grand jury inquiry into the Chance and Powell case.

Police Commission President Stanley K. Sheinbaum and Commission Vice President Jesse A. Brewer said that although they have confidence in Hall, they are concerned that the adverse publicity could hurt his credibility.

“Without prejudging anything about him in all of this,” Sheinbaum said, “my reading has been that he’s done a damn good job in that (officer-involved shooting unit) for the last five years. But that is under question now.”

Defense lawyers have accused Hall of pressuring witnesses to testify against Chance and Powell, which Hall vehemently denies. Hall--who maintains that the pair are “guilty as sin”--has also ruffled feathers since Chance and Powell were freed by declaring that they should have remained in prison.

The controversies involving Hall come less than a year after his unit was stung by tough criticism from the Christopher Commission, which investigated the Police Department after the King beating. Although Hall was not singled out, the commission found “serious flaws” in his team’s investigative techniques. Moreover, the city has paid out millions of dollars as a result of jury awards or settlements of cases--such as the recent one involving the SIS--where Hall’s unit cleared officers of wrongdoing.

In a wide-ranging, three-hour interview last week, Hall patiently defended himself. Although Police Chief Daryl F. Gates had urged him to remain silent, Hall was eager to talk, saying he wants to get his side of the story out.

“I feel vulnerable,” he said, “in that I am being focused on a lot more than I want to be. I’d like to just go about doing my job and not be the focus of attention. . . . But I don’t worry because I haven’t done anything to worry about.”

A 24-year-veteran of the Police Department, Hall is known for his straight-talking, personable demeanor. He is tall, balding and bespectacled, with an almost professorial air. At 49, he says he is not looking to move up within the ranks of the department; he is happy with his job--which he has held since mid-1987--and he would like to stay there.

Within the department, Hall commands considerable respect. Brewer, a former assistant chief, praises Hall as “an excellent investigator doing a great job.”

However, the allegation that Hall coerced witnesses in the Chance and Powell case was echoed several years ago, when Hall was accused of making improper contact with a witness in an internal affairs inquiry of him and his unit.

The complaint arose during the course of an extensive investigation into allegations that officers in Hall’s unit had been making racially derogatory remarks toward one another.

As a result, Hall received two reprimands--one for failing to take proper action against officers involved in a racially-charged shoving match, and the other for contacting the witness.

In a confidential report on the incident, obtained by The Times, an internal affairs investigator noted that “some of the witnesses felt they were being coerced.” But the investigator concluded that Hall’s “intention was good.” Hall said he talked to a witness--a Police Department stenographer--out of concern for her, knowing that she would be dragged into the investigation.

Hall also draws harsh criticism from civil rights lawyers. These attorneys complain that the investigations conducted by Hall’s officers are little more than cover-ups to protect police from civil and criminal liability.

“Hall is very polished,” said attorney Donald Cook. “But he’s someone who is amoral. He routinely supervises these officer-involved shooting investigations so that they exonerate the officers by not asking key questions, by not analyzing the critical pieces of evidence, by ignoring the important issues.”

Attorney Stephen Yagman, who is perhaps the legal community’s harshest critic of the Police Department, said: “Lt. Hall blesses all officer uses of force for the department and then presents the blessing to the public. He’s the official blesser.”

It was a lawsuit by Yagman that thrust Hall into the news last week for the second time in as many weeks. The lawsuit contended that SIS officers used excessive force when they killed three robbers and wounded a fourth at a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunland. The jury assessed a $44,042 damage award against the defendants, and complained afterward that the investigation conducted by Hall’s unit--which cleared the officers--contained numerous discrepancies.

Hall says discrepancies are a factor in every officer-involved shooting.

“I’ve heard Mr. Yagman. I’ve heard all of them,” Hall said. “. . . Are we so stupid that we couldn’t do it better if we were trying to cover it up? Because we certainly leave some huge loopholes. I suggest that comes from trying to report the truth, and the truth is never without controversy.”

Yagman’s SIS case was not the only one in which plaintiffs have won money--either through settlements or jury verdicts--from the city after Hall’s unit has cleared an officer of wrongdoing. The team found no improprieties when an officer drove his car over a suspect’s leg, but last year a jury awarded the victim $900,000.

Also last year, attorney Samuel Paz won a $9-million jury award for a man who was paralyzed after being shot by an LAPD officer. Paz settled for $5.5 million in exchange for the city waiving its right to appeal.

And two weeks ago, a jury awarded $560,000 to a man who suffered brain damage after being shot by an LAPD officer who stumbled upon the man and his girlfriend having sex in an abandoned house.

Hall says these lawsuits--in which he is often named personally as a defendant--are an inevitable byproduct of his work. “In our mind,” he said, “every shooting is going to be a civil suit.”

Although lawsuits are common, criminal prosecutions of officers are rare. Since 1988, the first full year in which Hall was in charge of the officer-involved shooting team, 112 people have been killed by LAPD gunfire.

His unit, which also examines any case in which there is serious injury or death at the hands of police, conducted 290 investigations during that time. None has resulted in criminal prosecutions. (The unit did not investigate the King case, in which four officers are on trial.)

Critics, including the Christopher Commission, attribute the dearth of prosecutions to techniques the department uses to investigate officer-involved shootings. As a result, the commission said, the inquiries have “serious flaws.”

Among the problems the commission cited are that officers are interviewed as a group, which gives them an opportunity to “get their stories straight”; that officer statements are not tape-recorded until after they are interviewed by Hall’s team, and that those statements are “compelled,” which means that they cannot be used in a criminal case. The commission said there is “no legitimate reason” for the department to use these techniques.

Hall did not set up these practices; they were in place long before he took over. But with the exception of the group interviews--which he says no longer occur--he defends them vigorously.

He said officer statements are not immediately tape-recorded because, in the chaotic aftermath of a shooting, officers use language that a jury might misinterpret. Taking compelled statements is necessary, he said, in order for the department to get a truthful account from its officers. If a shooting appears to involve criminal activity, he said, his unit passes it to Internal Affairs to investigate.

“We kind of protect the officers’ rights during our investigation,” Hall said. “It’s important that when we talk to the officers they know that we’re not there trying to put them in jail.”

Although Hall has come to expect the kind of criticism the jury in the SIS case leveled, he was unprepared for the public uproar over Chance and Powell. Of the five officers who played an important role in the case, four are now retired. Only Hall remains with the department and that fact--combined with the importance of the job he holds--has catapulted him into an unwelcome limelight.

The Chance and Powell case was overturned primarily because the department withheld evidence that a jailhouse informant who testified against the pair had implicated others, had failed a lie detector test and had been fed information by the police. The discovery of the concealed evidence prompted the district attorney to ask that Chance and Powell be freed.

Hall had nothing to do with the withheld evidence. But he has been accused by defense lawyer Barry Tarlow of engaging in “a shocking pattern of police intimidation” to persuade witnesses to testify against Chance and Powell.

Three witnesses recently have recanted, saying Hall and his partner had threatened them. And former LAPD Officer Roger Fiderio, who handled the case before Hall, said he was shocked that Hall managed to get the only eyewitness in the case--an 11-year-old girl--to identify Chance as one of the murderers. Fiderio says the girl was unable to do so.

Hall said there is a reason the girl changed her story: The Chance family home burned down and the entire family moved out of the neighborhood. With Chance out of the way, Hall said, the girl agreed to talk.

Hall acknowledges that--with no physical evidence connecting Chance and Powell to the murder--the case against them was shaky. Thus, he said, he and his partner were forced to make repeated contact with the witnesses in order to hold the prosecution together.

What Tarlow has called “relentless police pressure,” Hall describes as persistence. He described how he and his partner bought one witness a dozen roses on her 15th birthday in an attempt to keep her involved.

“This was not a strong case,” Hall said. “I agree with Tarlow on that. It was a lot of little pieces that fit together . . . and if you started losing those little pieces, you virtually had nothing. All of these people were very important to the trial. So we wanted to stay with them.”

But, he added: “Neither of us threatened anybody.”

Now, it may be up to the grand jury to determine whether Hall acted appropriately in the Chance and Powell investigation. Like Gates, he says he would welcome such an inquiry. “I know what I did,” he said, “and I know I didn’t do anything wrong.”